Palimpsest

Palimpsest – a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text. The title of this chapter calls the Wikipedia the “palimpsest” of human knowledge.

Wikipedia is not a product, it is a system. The content must be approached as such. If you want to navigate the "truth" via Wikipedia, you have to use the history and discuss pages.

Governing Wikipedia
There is a lack of clarity around governance structures. I think that’s the preference for the Wiki to stay flexible. There is a structure, though, that goes something like this:

Anonymous contributors
Registered users
Administrators
Bureaucrats
Stewards
Superelites
Jimmy Wales

As long as the equipotentiality of participants is respected and users have the ability to join the ranks, then the produsage model is not threatened.

In reality, “the core administrative arrangements are ‘far from strictly bottom up. In face a close inspection of Wiki’s process reveals that it has an elite at its center.’”

Accrediting Wikipedians - How does Wiki evaluate the merit of its contributors?
This is sort of in development. There’s a resistance to the idea that contributors have to prove their claimed credentials.
One suggestion is for individual communities to develop their own merit system.
The German wiki makes a distinction among contributions: notable, excellent

Beyond Wikipedia - Where does it go from here, and what of the question of quality of content?
Several other sites have formed that do not maintain the NPOV view. None have been very successful so far.

Non-encyclopedic sites have been created.
Everything 2 – users create articles on anything and can include their point of view.
Do-it-yourself hobbyists
Daytipper